Host Jazzbeau

As of May 14, Celebrity PowerUp points awarded for activities in April carried over to Azamara accounts. We don't know how much longer this will continue, as they had originally indicated it would be over by now – but a recent communication from Azamara about the disconnect said 'first quarter 2023.'

@jimmymac613 welcome to Cruise Critic. Just a reminder that per the CC guidelines you can't name travel agents. You are welcome to repost if you remove that part.

We have just done AMA's Tulip Time cruise, from April 17-25. The tulips at Keukenhof and Floralia [an estate outside Brussels that the ship took us to on April 22] were at their peak. [We went to Keukenhof on our own on April 17, between Schiphol and the ship, and then the cruise took us there again on April 24. We could see the difference that a week makes, and I'm guessing that April 10 would have been too early and May 1 too late.] If you're taking a Tulip Time cruise, it isn't the weather that you worry about: it's the blooming of the tulips!

It is highly unlikely anyone will join your roll call, because river ships as very small and excursions are included – so there aren't very many people in your target audience and they don't have much to talk about. If you started a roll call on the lines of "All A-Rosa Christmas Cruises" [or even better "All A-Rosa Cruises"] you might get some responses. But your best bet is to ask your questions here on the main River Cruising forum.

I would like a country-intensive cruise around New Zealand, without Australia. That would allow a comprehensive immersion, and also make flights from the US more convenient and shorter. [An Australia-intensive cruise could extend this as a b2b.]

So I'm hoping that the stop in Kotor (Montenegro) will provide the qualification for my Oct. 6 Adriatic Wonders cruise!

I thought I had read that if a cruise calls on only EU ports, VAT must be charged for all onboard purchases. Only if the cruise has at least one non-EU port do you escape VAT while at sea. [I still don't have a grasp of all the qualifying non-EU ports, but I'm pretty sure that Kusadasi and St. Peter Port are on the list, as examples]

Please just use 'default.' That allows the settings of each reading to adjust the type to the preferred size. Any particular size you select will lock it in to your setting, and you don't know how that looks on my screen.

Can you post a link to the Azamara website showing this? I'd really like to buy it with OBC.

American Queen depicted in new 'Mighty Mississippi' postage stamps

I can tell who didn't take High School French when they assume that Jazzbeau is a woman...

I noticed this on the daily schedule: Haven't heard about such an offer before, and can't find it anywhere on the Azamara website. Is this something new? Or have others seen it on their Azamara voyages?

This was in 2018 before they started the bidding. At that time they were offering upgrades for a fixed price. I knew you could upgrade from regular cabins to CC, but didn't realize they also allowed you to go from CC to CW – so I called them to ask about it and upgraded on the spot. They quoted a figure which seemed high but not crazy-high, until I realized it was per cabin not per person! And then they mentioned that it also came with $300 x 2 = $600 OBC. So it was a terrific bargain – and a good move by Azamara because now we book CW directly (there's no going back...]

When we upgraded from a CC to a CW, we were surprised to discover that we still got the $300 pp OBC that comes with those upper suites. That made a huge difference in the net cost of the upgrade!

Thanks for continuing this great 'live from' thread, it is really appreciated! I'm assuming that you took my earlier advice about composing off-line and pasting into Cruise Critic. The unanticipated side effect is that your last few posts have been set to 11-point type, which comes across as very small even when I increase my screen zoom. So I edited them and set the type size to 'default' – that allows each reader to adjust the type to fit their eyes [including my increasingly aged ones...]

What led me astray as this lede paragraph in the Wall Street Journal: "For all of the drama the English Premier League has manufactured in its 30 years, the one plot twist it had never seen was a final-day lead change. Titles had gone down to the wire, and even been decided in the dying moments of the season, but never before had the club that started the day in second place ended the day holding the trophy." 'Never before' seems to imply that today was different. But no, the second paragraph goes on: "Sunday was no exception." Still, nowhere does the article state who was in first place at the beginning of the day, leading to my confusion. So [here's the vain attempt to segue this back to Cruise Critic relevance...] Azamara is not the only one with communications problems... 😉

I knew there was a flaw in my scenario somewhere. Thanks!

English Premier League Final – I have a question for my knowledgeable British friends here: the Wall Street Journal report on the English Premier League says that Liverpool entered the day in first place, won their game (by a higher margin than Man City), but then ended up losing the league title to Man City. Can someone explain? [maybe our press got some detail wrong?]

One trick to maximize internet success is to compose your posts offline and then copy/paste into the CC box when you have a good connection.

I don't think it's uncommon with Ocean cruises either, if you book a pre- or post-cruise hotel stay. Three meals a day [or six, who's counting?] is only the rule onboard ships...

Que – at the risk of taking this thread beyond even where a 'water cooler' should not go... There's a joke with a big grain of truth in it that goes: when two Protestants disagree, they start a new church; when two Catholics disagree, they start a new branch of the Franciscans... Pax et bonum.

The photo will go wherever your cursor is when you click on 'insert.' So you can leave space between photos by adding a blank line before inserting the next one. Or you can add a comment by clicking on the photo, then 'return', then type your comment [then 'return' before adding the next photo]

I had to look up 5 cm to judge how big the hail was – WOW! That's bigger than a golf ball – which is the standard for 'huge' hail around here...

It seems pretty clear to me: the 270 day limit only applies to the original shots. A single booster shot is considered adequate without time limit.